A Made Up Sound - Take the Plunge

A Made Up Sound - Take the Plunge
There was a telling interview with Dave Huismans (2562 / A Made Up Sound) in FACT magazine last year, where the Dutch producer explained that "music doesn't really need context—whether that's a genre, or a music scene, or personal life of the author—to be relevant." He's right: No form of art or expression needs context to exist. But it helps. And often, it's far more important for music to be emotive, shocking, representative of a particular time or place, or just downright cool than it is for it to be well-made.

I think this is where my issue with a lot of Huismans' music comes in. I own more records by the guy than I do 90% of his contemporaries, but once they've been shelved, they rarely come back out. His production is consistently impeccable, with every little element in its own perfect space, but it's lacking something memorable—and constantly betrays the "fuck context" approach he, by his own admission, takes while making music.

"Take the Plunge" is different. It's prepared to take the odd risk, for one, and has a sense of timing that makes it stand out from that middle ground between dubstep and techno that becomes more greyscale by the day. At its centre are some heavily (and I mean heavily) panned synths, and when they drop full force, the rest of the track—mostly made up of rattling factory line drums—completely gives way before snapping straight back into place.

On the flip, "Anger Mgmt" looks back to Huismans' broken beat days, with bruked out, overdriven drums that are more than a little reminiscent of Altered Natives, and a similarly clanging, assembly line aesthetic to "Take the Plunge." It's far less remarkable than this single's title track—it is the B-side, after all—but overall it helps to make up the most memorable A Made Up Sound release to date.